Cleveland Browns at Pittsburgh Steelers, Thursday night: Who will win and by how much? Poll

Joshua Gunter, The Plain DealerPittsburgh wide receiver Mike Wallace (17) runs into the end zone to cheering Steelers fans as the Browns' Joe Haden (23) and T.J. Ward (43) end their chase. Pittsburgh won the game at Browns Stadium, 41-9, on Jan. 2, 2011.

The teams, not surprisingly, have been rapidly moving in opposite directions for more than two months.

Cleveland and Pittsburgh were both 2-1 after their Sept 25 games. Since then, the Browns have lost seven of nine to slide to 4-8 and last in the North Division. Meanwhile, the Steelers, after a 35-7 season-opening loss to the Baltimore Ravens, have won 9 of 11 games and are tied with Baltimore for the division lead with a 9-3 record.

The much-ballyhooed rivalry between the Browns and Steelers has seldom amounted to much in the sense that the teams have rarely been good at the same time.

The Browns have won 56 regular season games and the Steelers have won 60 in the series that began when Cleveland joined the NFL in 1950. Pittsburgh has won both playoff games between the teams.

The series has hardly ever been played on even terms.

The Browns won their first eight games against Pittsburgh and, following a later streak of seven straight wins, the Browns had won 32 games total against the Steelers and lost nine.

Pittsburgh then won 20 of its next 26 games against Cleveland, including winning streaks of five and six games.

Then, the teams split their next eight meetings. The Browns lost their last six games to the Steelers before owner Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore following the 1995 season.

Included in the six-game skid was a 29-9 Browns' loss to the Steelers in a second-round AFC playoff game on Jan. 7, 1995 at Pittsburgh, as The Plain Dealer's Mary Kay Cabot reported in her game story. The story is included in cleveland.com's Browns history database, which includes the Plain Dealer game stories on every regular season and playoff game in Browns history.

The Browns' first game after returning to the NFL as an expansion team was against the Steelers on Sept. 12, 1999, in the new Browns Stadium. The Plain Dealer's Tony Grossi wrote about the Browns' 43-0 loss to the Steelers.

Remarkably, the Browns then won their next two games against Pittsburgh. The Steelers then won six in a row before one Browns' win, and then Pittsburgh ran off a 12-game winning streak against Cleveland.

Included in Cleveland's six-game slide was a 36-33 wild card playoff loss at Pittsburgh on Jan. 5, 2003. Tony Grossi wrote about the game during which the Browns surrendered a 24-7 third quarter lead and a late 33-21 lead.

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